First, and most importantly, is the biblical testimony to Jesus Christ as the sufficient expression of God’s will with respect to the knowledge and assurance of our salvation and eternal destinies. It is a point that Karl Barth stressed so eloquently in his Church Dogmatics. One of Karl Barth’s theological strengths was to reorient traditional Reformed Calvinist thought about God’s eternal decree, predestination, and election from presenting God’s salvific will as a dark, mysterious unknown, to the “good news” that God’s salvific will for each of us is grounded in and completely revealed in Jesus Christ. He stressed that we can all know what God has willed for each of us with respect to our eternal salvation because of the revelation God has given to us in Christ Jesus. This theological perspective is christologically centered and therefore epistemologically and ontologically sufficient, whereas the Reformed Calvinist perspective is christologically obscure and epistemologically and ontologically deficient. We should not speak of God’s good intentions nebulously, as toward “humanity,” or generically as toward “sinners,” so as to preserve a vague hope of his care for us while maintaining that it is only certain one’s among these groups that he loves with a saving love. Barth points out that God’s revelation in Christ Jesus provides the knowledge and assurance that God is kindly disposed towards each of us. This is an essential element in the gospel if our soteriology is to remain evangelical, that is, coherent with its biblical definition as “good news.” Commenting on the traditional Reformed doctrine of predestination Barth writes,
“Before we do anything more, it is essential that we should make emphatically the first affirmation inscribed in the synopsis at the head of this section.[1] The truth which must now occupy us, the truth of the doctrine of predestination, is first and last and in all circumstances the sum of the Gospel, no matter how it may be understood in detail, no matter what apparently contradictory aspects or moments it may present to us. It is itself evangel: glad tidings; news which uplifts, comforts and sustains…It is not a mixed message of joy and terror, salvation and damnation. Originally and finally it is not dialectical but non-dialectical. It does not proclaim in the same breath both good and evil, both help and destruction, both life and death. It does of course throw a shadow. We cannot overlook or ignore this aspect of the matter. In itself, however, it is light and not darkness. We cannot therefore speak of the later aspect in the same breath. In any case, even under this aspect, the final word is never that of warning, of judgment, of punishment, of a barrier erected, of a grave opened. We cannot speak of it without mentioning all these things. The Yes cannot be heard unless the No is also heard. But the No is said for the sake of the Yes and not for its own sake. In substance, therefore, the first and last word is Yes and not No.”[2]
The problem of the doctrine of an “effectual call,” which presupposes an unconditional election (i.e., Calvinist predestination), is that it inserts into the gospel a definite “No” for a multitude of people who are not elect. For these Christ has no salvific meaning or purpose. As such, the underlying doctrinal presuppositions of an “effectual call” are christologically deficient. There is no salvation to be found in Christ for this vast multitude of the non-elect. Notwithstanding our ignorance of who these non-elect are, the epistemological problem still remains for all of us. There is now introduced a “Yes” and a “No” with no way of knowing which has been decreed for us. In addition, the veracity or the truth of the proclamation is compromised. It is true for some but false for others. The same message of light, life and hope is a falsity for many. This is antithetical to the very essence of a God of truth and for what Jesus came to accomplish, what he taught, and with the fact that in and of himself he reveals the Father’s salvific will. This is the unnecessary ontological problem that is inherent in Calvinism. This is an insurmountable existential / epistemological / ontological difficulty in Vanhoozer’s doctrine of an “effectual call” even though Vanhoozer attempts to affirm that,
“At the center of Christian theology stands the conviction that the divine life has truly been shared with us in Jesus Christ.”[3]
Although Vanhoozer makes this general statement, we come to see that a doctrine of an “effectual call” restricts, qualifies, and orients the “sharing” of this “divine life” with profoundly negative Christological and epistemological implications. To say that “the divine life has truly been shared with us in Jesus Christ,” and also hold to a doctrine of an “effectual call” is to distort the biblical witness as to the accessibility and scope of the “sharing” of that “divine life” in Jesus Christ. An “effectual call” means that the “divine life” in Jesus Christ was neither intended for, nor can it be shared with, the non-elect. As such, “divine life” is not found “in Christ” but in an unknown eternal decision of God that is brought about “through Christ.” For the non-elect it would be absolutely false to say that the “divine life is shared with us in Jesus Christ.” When the “us” are the non-elect who hear the “gospel,” no “divine life “is “shared” “in Jesus Christ.” And to use fancy, sophisticated language like “…God efficaciously leads (not lures) those to whom he speaks to his desired dialogical end” (RT, 494) certainly does not help. The bottom-line determinism and the Christological problem remain. An “effectual call” shifts the focus away from the person of Christ as the sufficient revelation of God’s salvific will for every person whereby we can know his good and perfect will for us all, to a deterministic decision of God made in eternity past that has fixed each person’s individual destiny leaving the knowledge of God’s saving disposition towards us individually unknown. As such, Christ shares nothing of the divine life for a multitude of non-elect persons and simply implements the decision of God regarding the salvation of the elect. Christ makes the salvation God decided for a predetermined elect a reality, but the reality of salvation is not found in Christ himself as the present manifestation of the saving will of God for all sinners and all who hear the gospel message. On Calvinism, one can only wait and hope for an “effectual call” to a salvation that has its ultimate source in a premundane decision of God to save certain individuals. From the point of view of a sound, biblical hermeneutic, it seems that Vanhoozer needs to provide rational coherence between his doctrine of an “effectual call” and the biblical data on the person and work of Christ, the definition of the gospel, the precise content of the gospel message, the nature of faith and the clear biblical witness to the universal intention, scope and possibility of salvation for all.[4]
There are also profound implications here for our ability to respond properly to God. Once one is aware of the Reformed Calvinist soteriological scheme which provides no confidence that God has good saving intentions in store for you, me or any others, how are we to properly love, respect, or reverence God in return? Barth addresses this point of our knowledge of God’s salvific will for us as individuals and its practical implications for our response of love, humility and worship towards him.
“We may begin with an epistemological observation. Our thesis is that God’s eternal will is the election of Jesus Christ. At this point we part company with all previous interpretations of the doctrine of predestination. In these the Subject and object of predestination (the electing God and elected man) are determined ultimately by the fact that both quantities are treated as unknown…Indeed, in the most consistently developed forms of the dogma we are told openly that on both sides we have to do, necessarily, with a great mystery. In the sharpest contrast to this view our thesis that the eternal will of God is the election of Jesus Christ means that we deny the existence of any such twofold mystery…what matters here is really the nature of this one and twofold mystery, whether it is incomprehensible light or incomprehensible darkness. What matters is whether at this point we have to recognise and respect the majesty of a God who is known to us or whether we have to recognise and respect the majesty of a God who is not known to us. Again, what matters is whether the man confronted by the majesty of that God is known or not known to us. The history of the doctrine is shot through with a great struggle for the affirmation of the fact that in the mystery of election we have to do with light and not darkness, that the electing God and elected man are known quantities and not unknown. But this affirmation could not and cannot be made as long as the step is not taken which we are now taking and have already taken in the present thesis; as long as it is not admitted that in the eternal predestination of God we have to do on both sides with only one name and one person, the same name and same person, Jesus Christ…For as long as we are left in obscurity on the one side or the other, and in practice both, as long as we cannot ultimately know, and ought not to know, and ought not even to ask, who is the electing God and elected man, it does not avail us in the least to be assured and reassured that in face of this mystery we ought to be silent and to humble ourselves and to adore. For truly to be silent and to humble ourselves and to adore we must know with whom and with what we have to do. The mystery must be manifest to us as such, i.e., it must have a definite character. It must have the power and dignity to provoke in us an equally definite silence, and humility and adoration.”[5]
The Calvinist doctrines of unconditional election and an “effectual call” cannot produce or sustain this silence, humility, and adoration towards God. Indeed, when carefully thought through, and one does not merely presuppose their own election, those doctrines suppress, if not eradicate, a proper response to God because they obscure the nature of God’s thoughts about us personally and individually. Certainly, on Calvinism, God is worshipped in humility, adoration, and silence. This is because the Calvinist presupposes his own election and God is viewed in deterministic, awe-inspiring terms. But what about the saving love of God? Barth challenges any interpretation of an eternal decree or election that dichotomizes God’s will as unknown with the knowledge of God’s will made know in Christ. God’s will with respect to our salvation is completely revealed to us “in Christ.” The two are one and the same and therefore all of what is known in Christ should not be obfuscated by interpretations of God’s eternal decree and election that make God’s will and love for us an unknown.[6] Barth continues,
“Under the concept of predestination, in full accord with tradition, we acknowledge the unsearchable majesty of the good-pleasure with which God has from all eternity and in all eternity both the right and the power to dispose of the world and us, in which as God He has in fact disposed of us and the world, so that His eternal will is Alpha and Omega with which all our thinking about the world and ourselves must begin and end.
But we depart from the tradition when we say that for us there is no obscurity about this good-pleasure of the eternal will of God. It is not a good-pleasure which we have to admire and reverence as divine in virtue of such obscurity…We negative this whole understanding because positively we must affirm that at the beginning of all things God’s eternal plan and decree was identical with what is disclosed to us in time as the revelation of God and of the truth about all things. This is the light of the divine good-pleasure…As we understand the freedom of the predestinating God, it does not deny but opens up itself to our knowledge…The core of this thesis is to be found in the perception that in respect of predestination we must not and need not separate ourselves from the revelation of God as such, because in that revelation predestination is revealed as well, because predestination is not hidden but disclosed. God is the self-revealing God, and as such he is the electing God. The eternal will of God which is before time is the same as the eternal will of God that is above time, and which reveals itself as such and operates as such in time…Revealing to us the fullness of the one God, it discloses to us not only what the will of God is, but also what it was and what it will be. And it does so in such a way that we are satisfied as well as God…there is nothing which is not told us concerning the meaning and direction and nature of God’s will for us…It is a question of revelation. It is a question of the knowledge of the will of God…In the beginning with God, i.e., in the resolve of God which precedes the existence, the possibility and the reality of all his creatures, the very first thing is the decree whose realization means and is Jesus Christ. This decree is perfect in both subject and object…It is itself the eternal will of God. The will of God is Jesus Christ, and this will is known to us in the revelation of Jesus Christ. If we acknowledge this, if we seriously accept Jesus Christ as the content of his will, then we cannot seek any other will of God, either in heaven or earth, either in time or eternity. This will is God’s will. We must abide by it because God Himself abides by it; because God Himself allows us and commands us to abide by it. And this decree of God is not obscure but clear.[7]
Note that what Barth says here is in certain respects in accord with Vanhoozer’s thesis that we know God and his will through his historical speech-acts recorded in Scripture. Yet Vanhoozer is pressured by his theological presuppositions to discount the fact that we know God’s salvific will for each of us as centered and revealed in Christ. Barth continues to argue that biblical predestination is misunderstood and diminished if it is made to refer to a decretum absolutum (absolute decree) whereby God unconditionally predetermines the salvation or damnation of individuals. Such a view shuts down legitimate questioning (sacrificium intellectus) and does not foster faith. Rather, an assured knowledge of God’s good will towards us in Christ, that is, a properly oriented doctrine of predestination, exalts God’s sovereign majesty. Rather than have us cowering before an arbitrary God of absolute determinism, the biblical doctrines of predestination and election are able to foster a proper, genuine love for God, praise to him, intellectual honesty and an abiding faith. Barth states,
“In this decree we do not have to assert a God of omnipotence and to cower down before Him. In all his incomprehensibility we may know Him and love Him and praise Him as the One who has truly revealed to us his wisdom and mercy and righteousness, and who has revealed himself as the One who is Himself all these things. God’s glory overflows in this supreme act of His freedom: illuminating, and convincing, and glorifying itself; not therefore demanding a scarificium intellectus but awakening faith. The Son of God determined to give himself from all eternity. With the Father and the Holy Spirit He chose to unite Himself with the lost Son of Man. This Son of Man was from all eternity the object of the election of the Father, Son and Spirit. And the reality of this eternal being together of God and man is a concrete decree. It has as its content one name and one person. This decree is Jesus Christ, and for this very reason it cannot be a decretum absolutum.”[8]
Therefore, to maintain a doctrine of an “effectual call” does nothing to alleviate the essential problematic created by the determinism of the absolute decree upon which it is based. To maintain an “effectual call” in addition to a “general call” introduces a dichotomy between the revelation of the salvific will of God in Christ Jesus and a salvific will of God yet unknown. This is a dichotomy not testified to in Scripture where we find one salvific will of God revealed and contained in a unified message of universal “good news” of salvation by faith in Christ Jesus. An “effectual call” in addition to a “general call” creates a dichotomy between God’s grace revealed “in Christ” which calls for a response of faith, and an anxious unknown regarding God’s disposition towards us individually and the eternal destiny to which we were assigned. It removes from the present any knowledge and assurance that God in Christ has provided for our salvation and relegates this knowledge and assurance into the mysterious epistemological abyss of eternity past. On Calvinism, God’s saving will is not completely found “in Christ,” but is rooted in an absolute deterministic decree that will “effect” salvation only in those predestined for it by God himself. Who these “elect” people are, we do not know. Whom God will “effectually” call, we do not know. What might be a sure indication of an “effectual call,” we also do not know. If it is faith granted to certain elect individuals, this is incoherent with the gospel content and proclamation which places the responsibility upon the individual to “repent and believe the gospel” – a message that goes out to all and was the message proclaimed by our Lord himself. (Mk. 1:15) Thus, in his doctrine of an “effectual call” Vanhoozer has adopted the essential problematic of Reformed Calvinist theology – an inevitable, premundane determinism that shifts the focus of the revelation of God’s salvific will for every individual from Christ to be appropriated by believing this “good news”, to an inaccessible, unchangeable, determination of God in eternity past as to who and who will not be saved.
To argue for “a communicative joint” that enables God to be sovereign in the fashion of Calvinist deterministic thought; to present a “communicative” compatibilism as the explanation of deterministic sovereignty and human freedom, fails to acknowledge the essential problem in Calvinist determinism – the misplaced focus of God’s will from Christ to an absolute, eternal decree that has fixed each person’s life and destiny. It distorts the biblical teaching that God has decreed that his will for all men, including their eternal destinies, would be made manifest in Jesus Christ, God’s Elect One (1 Pet. 2:4). It is the saving work of God’s Elect One as appropriated by sinners through their faith response to the “good news” proclaimed that places them among the elect of God. Paul and Peter pick up on the Old Testament history of Israel as the elect people of God and apply it to believers in Jesus – the Elect One. We are elect “in Him” (Eph. 1) as we, as sinners, respond to God’s offer of salvation “in Christ” by faith. This is the full gospel of God testified to in Scripture. We are not left to wait to be “effected” by the Spirit as one who is either predestined to be saved or predestined to be damned.
Again, what we think about God is only as good as a true knowledge of what he thinks about us. What does he think about us? What are God’s thoughts towards each of us individually? What does he think about you? What does he think about me? Vanhoozer’s Calvinist doctrine of an “effectual call” with its necessary deterministic implications does not leave us with much promise in this regard. What we think about God should be reflective of what he thinks about us. What God thinks about us forms the content of the gospel as “good news” and therefore the proclamation of the gospel constitutes the essential “communicative” dynamic between God and man which requires a human response to God’s communication. What God thinks about any of us individually is left void in Calvinist soteriology. What a despairing thought that God may have turned his back on you or me, predestining us to eternal torment.
Thus, the biblical gospel needs to be carefully defined and preserved from error. Biblically, what God thinks about us is wholly good, leaving us without excuse for our rejection of his gracious salvation made obtainable simply by faith – that is, God can justly require our consent, repentance, submission, surrender, trust and obedience precisely because this is the only appropriate response of the creature to the Creator and the sinner to his Savior. God can justly require repentance and faith because he has made known his love and grace to us in Christ. We have been saved from the wrath of God (Rom. 5:9). To respond in any other way is to reject God’s good plans and purposes for oneself. This plan of salvation is what was decreed from before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1-3). Its working out in the world into a universal salvation required God’s selecting purposes –a people to which he would reveal himself and from which would come the Elect One (i.e., Jesus), and other specially chosen by God for a particular mission and service (i.e., Paul), that salvation would be found in Christ alone, and be appropriated by faith alone and that only those believing in him would have everlasting life. God’s chosen ways are unchanging and hem us in on every side to face our sin and acknowledge God’s way of salvation. The essence of that decree was that the salvific will of God would be fully revealed, and eternal life found in Christ. It would be a salvation appropriated by a personal, individual response of faith. Without this divine work of salvation on our behalf in Christ and without hearing this message of “good news” we are lost and hopeless. We would remain dead in trespasses and sins. But once we hear the message of “good news” we have reached a crisis point of decision. The way of salvation is opened to us. And we are assured of God’s love and good intentions towards us and the assurance that this salvation is for us. We simply need to respond in love and faith. But on Calvinism we are faced with a logical and moral confusion. We are being asked to offer up to God our love, worship, and reverence, despite the fact that he may have predestined us to eternal separation from himself and torment in hell. This is not the way we are constituted by God as persons made in his image. This Calvinist sentiment – “I will love God even if he has predestined me to eternity separated from him and torment in hell” – is nonsense. To hold such a position smacks of having achieved the height of spiritual devotion while also wearing it as a badge of personal honor. It is the evidence of gross pride in one’s spiritual humility! Rather, hear Augustine’s conclusion as he wrestles with this multifaceted dynamic between God and man.
“…you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they can find peace in you…For how can one pray to you unless one knows you? If one does not know you, one may pray not to you, but to something else. Or is it rather the case that we should pray to you in order that we may come to know you? But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe without a preacher? And again, they that seek the Lord shall praise Him: for they that seek shall find Him, and they that find him shall praise Him. Let me seek you, Lord, by praying to you and let me pray believing in you; since to us you have been preached…Oh that I may find my rest and peace in you! Oh, that you would come into my heart and so inebriate it that I would forget my own evils and embrace my one and only good, which is you! What are you to me? Have mercy on me that I may speak. What am I to you, that you should demand to be loved by me? That you should be angry with me, if I fail to love you, and should threaten me with utmost misery? And not to love you, is not this in itself misery enough? Oh, in the name of all your mercies, O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me! Say unto my soul; I am thy salvation. Speak so that I can hear. See, Lord, the ears of my heart are in front of you. Open them and say unto my soul: I am thy salvation. At these words I shall run and I shall take hold of you.”[9]
What is Augustine’s struggle here? It is a Christological struggle. It is that he, and we also, must have a sure knowledge of God’s good intentions – his saving intentions – towards us so that we may find and know we have forgiveness and in honesty and integrity we can pray, love, and worship God in return. We can only “run” and “take hold of” God if we hear “I am thy salvation.” We can only know that this salvation applies to us as the cross of Christ is lifted up as the public demonstration of the saving love of God to all. We can only respond to God in love, faith, worship, and reverence on the basis of the assurance that he is kindly disposed towards us and desires our salvation. All this is assuredly found in Christ. It is not, and cannot, be found in a decree of God made in eternity past as to whom he would love and save and whom he would not. Rather, in Christ is found our salvation. It is actually found there. It is not found in the decision of God made in eternity past and merely implemented by Jesus on the cross. No! The saving love of God is found in Jesus on the cross. In other words, as the apostle John records Jesus’ teaching on the matter, the salvific love of God is made manifest in him, and in that he will be (has been) publicly crucified, God has expressed his love to all and Jesus draws all to love and believe on him and be saved (Jn. 6:22-71; 12:27-50). There is no need to despair over whether God loves you and wants you to be saved due to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination or unconditional election. That is the Christological deficiency of Calvinism. If we did not know God’s love in Christ, if we were to think it is a real possibility that he has predestined us, and a myriad of others, to eternal separation from himself and torment in hell, then the assurance of God’s saving love to us, and the basis of our reciprocal love for and worship of God is gone. We must know of God’s good intentions towards us for us to love him in return. He has demonstrated that in Christ (Rom 5:8) As such, our eternal destiny will be of our own choosing, not his. What God does in Jesus he does to save not condemn. God, the Father, offers us light, life and hope in Christ. The possibility of obtaining eternal life is of God’s own making and is offered to each of us in the “good news” of the gospel. This full salvation is the “gift of God,” to be received by faith that it may be obtained by all. The public cross of Christ is the expression of God’s love and grace to all sinners. (Eph. 2:8; Rom. 5:2, 15-21) God loved us first, therefore we love him and others. (1 Jn. 4:19)
Back to “The Vanhoozer Essays”
[1] That is, “The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel because of all words that can be said or heard it is the best.” Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II.2, ch. VII, “The Election of God” (New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 3.
[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II.2, ch. VII, “The Election of God” (New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 12, 13.
[3] Badcock, Light of Truth & Fire of Love, p. 236 in Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 268.
[4] See Jn. 1:4-18, 29; 12:32, 36, 44-50. Acts 10:1-11:18. Note especially the universality, individual possibility and the impartiality of God’s work of salvation in 10:28, 34-35, 43; 11:14, 17. Rom. 3:23-30, 4:16, 5:8-11, 15-21, 11:32. 2 Cor. 5:19-6:1. Gal. 3:8. Eph. 1:7-14, 2:11-3:13. Note especially the definition of “the mystery of his will” and the fact of its revelation in Eph. 1:9, 12, 13, 3:3-6, 9, 11-12; Col. 1:24-2:5; 4:3. 1 Tim. 1:15-17, 2:4-6, 4:10. 2 Tim. 1:8-10. Titus 2:11, 14, 3:4-8. Heb. 2:9, 5:9, 6:20, 7:25, 9:24, 12:25. 1 Pet. 2:1-10. 2 Pet. 2:1, 3:9. 1 Jn. 2:2, 4:7-16. Note the indiscriminate ethical imperative to love based upon the assurance and universality of God’s love.
[5] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II.2, ch. VII, “The Election of God” (New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 146, 147.
[6] Deut. 18:15-19; Jn. 1:14-18; Eph. 1:9, 3:6; Col. 1:15, 19, 24-2:3; Heb. 1:1-3.
[7] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II.2, ch. VII, “The Election of God” (New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 155-58.
[8] Ibid. 158.
[9] The Confessions of Saint Augustine, trans. Rex Warner, (New York: Mentor Books, 1963), 17, 19-20.
The Truth of the Gospel 